Posts tagged ‘chinese authorities’

Will the Chinese anti-English (American) language campaign be any more successful than the French one? I wonder.

See – http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/30/france-s-pointless-hopeless-battle-against-english.html

“Chinese authorities are waging a war on American culture and the use of English. In April, China’s media regulators yanked the popular U.S. television shows The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, and The Good Wife from Chinese streaming websites Sohu (SOHU) and Youku (YOKU). The official party newspaper, People’s Daily, ran two editorials in April bemoaning the use of words borrowed from English when speaking Chinese. Then in mid-May came a flurry of reports in the state media confirming plans announced last fall to reduce the importance of English-language instruction and to expand courses on traditional culture in grade school and high school.

The government “wants to make us respect the Chinese language and culture more,” says Guo Jintong, a 16-year-old Beijing high school student, as he sits in a Starbucks drinking a grande cappuccino. “With everyone wanting to go overseas to study, there is a craze for English and the West that you can say has become excessive. This could have a bad effect on China.” Guo says he plans to go to the U.S. for graduate school after getting his bachelor’s in physics in China.

China’s obsession with English dates to the establishment of foreign-language schools and translation centers—mainly for English—along China’s coast after the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century, says Yang Rui, director of the Comparative Education Research Center at the University of Hong Kong. And while Russian was the official second language during the 1950s, English again took primacy when Deng Xiaoping launched economic reforms in 1978 and China was eager for technology and investment from the West. (Yang learned English by secretly listening to banned Voice of America broadcasts during the Cultural Revolution, when speaking a foreign tongue could land you in jail.)”

Mr Wuer, a former student leader of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square who now resides in Taiwan, boarded a Cathay Pacific Airways flight from Taipei on Monday morning to Bangkok, with a stopover in Hong Kong. He made use of the stopover to turn himself into Hong Kong authorities. He believes he remains on a wanted fugitive in China for his role in the 1989 student protests.

In the immediate aftermath of the June 4 crackdown on the protests, he was No. 2 on China’s list of most-wanted dissidents.

In an online statement posted on his blog, Mr. Wu’er urged the city’s government to arrest and extradite him to the Chinese authorities during. However, Hong Kong officials chose to deport him back to Taiwan Monday afternoon, according to Kenneth Lam, a Hong Kong-based solicitor who assisted Mr. Wu’er at the Hong Kong airport.

A spokesman at Hong Kong’s Immigration Department said it won’t comment on individual cases but said immigration officers may examine any visitor on arrival to the city to determine whether the person meets standard immigration requirements.

Mr. Wu’er has tried several times to attempt a re-entry to China. In 2009, he flew to Macau but was detained at the airport and deported. In 2010, he tried to enter the Chinese embassy in Tokyo and in 2012, he entered the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C., but both attempts to turn himself in were unsuccessful.

Mr. Wu’er said Monday the latest move was a “last resort” as Chinese authorities have refused to issue passports for his family members to visit him since he fled into exile shortly after the Tiananmen crackdown.

“I miss my parents and my family, and I hope to be able to be reunited with them while they are still alive ,” Mr. Wu’er said in the statement, noting that his parents are old and in ill health.

We sincerely hope that the author is right and that the Chinese authorities both agree with him and decide to implement his suggestions – soon!

NY Times: “CHINA is experiencing its most severe economic downturn in decades, and revitalizing its economic model is critical to future prosperity — not only in China, but around the world.

Central to that effort is the transformation of China’s cities. By adopting a new approach to urbanization, its leaders can assure more balanced investment, address a major source of debt, achieve a consumption windfall and clean up the country’s environment. Otherwise, China’s economic and environmental problems will worsen, with vast implications for the rest of the world.

China’s success has been built on two pillars: investment and exports. But after decades of growth, this model is delivering diminishing returns. There is little doubt that China must change to a new model, one that relies on consumption to generate growth, while addressing debt and broadening the use of sustainable energy and environmental practices.

Cities, home to hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers, lie at the core of this problem — and offer a potential solution.

A flawed system of municipal finance is driving debt, corruption and dissent, while unsustainable urban planning has yielded polluted cities that are destroying China’s ecosystem. Yet China’s future requires continued urbanization, which, absent a new approach, will only make the problem worse.

Cities can, however, be part of the solution: better urban policies can put China on a healthier path forward, economically and environmentally.

For one thing, municipal financial reform is essential because debt is crushing Chinese cities, leaving mayors with no means of financing the central government’s policy mandates. Mayors have developed creative ways to raise revenues, including appropriating farmers’ land and seizing land on the outskirts of cities to sell to developers. But these practices contribute to urban sprawl and often feed corruption.

Among other changes, China’s cities need transparent budgets and the devolution of more tax authority to cities.

More innovative urban planning and design are also needed. To achieve the country’s goals of raising living standards for a broader share of the population, cities must be better designed to yield energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.

China’s potential is stifled by traffic and pollution. Gazing out my hotel window in Beijing on a recent trip, I saw air that was hazy and polluted — a stark contrast to the sparkling view of Lake Michigan I enjoy from my kitchen window at home in Chicago.

This isn’t just China’s problem. Experts found that dirty air from China contributed up to 20 percent of the ground-level pollution on the American West Coast in 2010. And that is when just one-tenth of Chinese own cars. Imagine what China’s air quality will become when this number triples, as some experts predict it will within the next several years.

Take another example: construction. Within city centers are countless “superblocks” — half-kilometer-square developments interspersed with huge boulevards that create monster traffic jams and skyrocketing pollution.

In response, an approach that featured smaller blocks and mixed-use neighborhoods and accessible public transportation would alleviate these unintended consequences. Such “livable cities” would balance economic development with energy efficiency, improve air quality and reduce congestion.

Getting China’s urbanization right will matter to us all. Fortunately, many in China understand this, and cooperation with the United States government, corporate world and nonprofit sector, including my own research and advocacy institute, is bringing them the tools they need to prioritize design issues in their cities and adapt infrastructure plans now. These tools include instruction in sustainable practices for government leaders, public education in environmental issues and specialized training for the country’s urban planners.

China must adopt this new approach quickly, before vast infrastructure investment makes the current model irreversible. By 2025, China is projected to have a staggering 200 cities with populations over one million. America has just nine.

Global prosperity depends on China’s continuing to be an engine of growth. We all need China to reinvent its economic model. Working together on urbanization creates progress toward joint solutions to the challenges the world faces from overwhelming pressure on natural ecosystems, resources and commodities.

We need Chinese cities to succeed, and we can help ensure that they do so.”

Xinhua: “Chinese authorities closed 16 websites and detained six people responsible for “fabricating or disseminating online rumors,” the State Internet Information Office SIIO and Beijing police said Friday. The websites, including meizhou.net, xn528.com and cndy.com.cn, were closed for spreading rumors of “military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing,” which were fabricated by some lawless people recently, said a spokesman with SIIO. The rumors have caused “a very bad influence on the public” and the websites were closed in accordance with laws for failing to stop the spread of rumors, said the spokesman.

Beijing police also detained six people for allegedly fabricating and spreading the above-mentioned rumors, particularly through microblogging posts, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security. An undisclosed number of people who had disseminated similar rumors on the Internet were also “admonished and educated,” who have shown intention to repent, the police said.”